This post is a paid promotion by Fisher-Price and all opinions are my own. Looking for a great new building toy for the holidays? Blake loves Wonder Makers™ toys.

Having recently turned five, Blake is all about building. He loves to tinker, experiment and proudly show off his creations. Which is why I was happy to welcome Wonder Makers™ design systems from Fisher-Price into our home.

Wonder Makers toys have mixed-materials, a variety of textures, plenty of bright colors and kid-powered features. Blake instantly gravitated towards the rubber connectors which can be used to build a track for a car or help construct a building, noting how they were different from any other building toy he had previously played with.

Make my DIY Mr. Gold costume to turn yourself or your child into the legendary Mr. Gold LEGO for Halloween. This costume won second place in the LEGOLAND California Brick-or-Treat costume contest but is easy enough for just about anyone to make.

Do you know about Mr. Gold at LEGOLAND? He’s the famous and elusive catch of any LEGO lover. Mr. Gold is a SUPER rare Minifigure who has been further immortalized by becoming a collectible pop badge at LEGOLAND. The only way to get a Mr. Gold badge is to find an employee wearing him and to ask very nicely if they have Mr. Gold.

What’s the best gift for the teen or tween? The gift of choice! Thanks to Happy Cards® for sponsoring this post.

Gifting in this age seems to run the fine line between wanting to give the gift of choice and also wanting to choose something personal. I think the happiest medium is a combination of the two. Enter Happy Cards®. Each gift card gives the freedom to shop, eat and play at a variety of retailers tailored to the recipient. In this case, my recipient was tween-age Kayla.

With school back in session and Kayla entering 5th grade, we’ve recruited her to do a job that goes beyond traditional chores. She’s our in-house Mandarin tutor for Blake, who just began kindergarten at the school she’s attended for the last few years.

Remind your Harry Potter fan to clean their room while giving them a giggle with my free Harry Potter printable! If you have a child that loves Harry Potter then you’ve probably acquired some LEGO Minifigures recently. When we found Dobby, I had the idea to create this Dobby is free printable, reminding her to clean her room.

You might remember that last year I gave a Kayla a modern tween bedroom makeover with a Harry Potter twist. We installed new flooring with Mohawk’s Air.o which was exciting after years of stained carpet. It also forced us (me) to move everything out of her room and do a massive purge of the junk kids seem to accumulate. [Read more…]

Heard about the BMT Kindness Project and want to help? Here’s a link to our Amazon Wishlist, designed to help patients of the bone marrow transplant unit at UCSD. You can also see/hear me get out of my very comfy zone of public writing and head into my much less comfy zone of public speaking right here.

I recently had the privilege of being a Keynote speaker at the Mom 2.0 Summit in Austin, TX and it was both terrifying and amazing! I spoke on the topic of being kind on the Internet as part of Google’s #BeInternetAwesome initiative, which aims to empower parents to raise their kids as good citizens both on and offline. [Read more…]

As many of you know, my worst fears were realized on September 21st. My leukemia is back and I need a bone marrow or stem cell transplant to have a chance at living through the next year. After just over a year of remission, I received that life altering phone call and well, here we go again.

Remission always haunted me because you have something to lose. Being in active treatment, my brain recognizes it as being the cornered animal when the only choice you have is to fight like heck or die. And perhaps mentally I thrive with having nothing to lose (well, everything to lose but also everything to gain) versus sitting around praying something sticks.

From that phone call to hospital admission I had about 72 hours to process my emotions, tell our family and tell our kids. To plan backup help from friends and neighbors, squeeze in a high and low filled family day and pack for a 4-6 week stay at UCSD La Jolla for another induction chemotherapy in the hopes of remission. [Read more…]